When I go to the theatre I want to be entertained – yes, it does need to be said, because writers sometimes feel it’s their right to commit the unforgivable sin and bore the hell out of the audience. So let’s make “entertainment” the primary goal of a play and say I want to feel “delight” watching a play.
I want the characters and their journey to haunt me – at least for a few days after leaving the theatre, hopefully for the rest of my life. If the journey seems too easy for the characters, if the protagonist’s question is too easily answered, if “the problem” isn’t really that much of a problem – I remain a spectator.
I want the play to trouble my peace, to raise doubts about what I thought was right or wrong, good or bad. I want to feel “pity and fear” – pity because the dilemma they face is more than I could ever cope with; fear because it could happen to me. I want the characters to start haunting me right there in the darkness of the auditorium.
Oh – and I want to laugh/smile because I can’t take two hours of misery, even if the play is deemed a tragedy.
Before my pen touches paper, I watch, read, listen and think. I become interested enough in a subject to begin researching; I take notes; thoughts come at me in dreams, thoughts occur gently or mug me walking down the street. And suddenly out of that nebula a character is glimpsed and starts haunting me...
A mother – her middle daughter has been in prison for most of her life; her eldest daughter has come home after an absence of ten years; her youngest daughter is little more than a child, as if time stopped for her with some terrible event. As it did for all of them.
And then to avoid melodrama I bury the horror – as the characters do – in day-to-day life (one and a half days, to be more accurate). Will I get married? What’s for dinner? Should I have this baby? Does Mr Darcy really exist? Can a vicar keep his trousers on in company? Why won’t my mum talk to me? While Auden’s “glacier knocks in the cupboard.”
Until the glacier breaks out of the cupboard and they have to talk about it. They start talking. And we the audience are with them in this dialogue/negotiation/communion. Well – we could hear the glacier knocking right from the start and we’re kind of relieved it broke out of the cupboard into the lounge. It’s huge and we know next to nothing about glaciers – but at least we’re not ignoring that damned knocking anymore.
That’s what I want: a communion to take place when we – the writer, director, actors, production team and audience – are gathered together in the darkness. And in that communion, I want the audience to be delighted and haunted.
Brought up in Southend from the age of 11 Rob trained as an actor at East 15 before taking up writing as a career. He won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award in 1995 for Desert Island Dream Girl and again in 1996 for The Interview. Rob has had plays performed on the fringe in London, Edinburgh, Scarborough, Guernsey, Bristol, Manchester, Southend, Brighton, Augsburg Germany.
He has written extensively for TV - 19 episodes of Family Affairs for Channel Five - edited 3 screenplays for different companies, and adapted The Tempest as a libretto for the composer Anthony Bolton. Favourite Bad review: “Hamilton should have left this one in his top drawer.” Time Out. Favourite Good review: “This is the sort of playwriting Britain needs.” The Independent.
Rob’s favourite playwrights include Ibsen, Strindberg, Sophocles, Mamet, Connor McPherson, Pinter. Obsessed with the game of chess, Rob plays for Herne Bay in the Thanet Chess League.
I want the characters and their journey to haunt me – at least for a few days after leaving the theatre, hopefully for the rest of my life. If the journey seems too easy for the characters, if the protagonist’s question is too easily answered, if “the problem” isn’t really that much of a problem – I remain a spectator.
I want the play to trouble my peace, to raise doubts about what I thought was right or wrong, good or bad. I want to feel “pity and fear” – pity because the dilemma they face is more than I could ever cope with; fear because it could happen to me. I want the characters to start haunting me right there in the darkness of the auditorium.
Oh – and I want to laugh/smile because I can’t take two hours of misery, even if the play is deemed a tragedy.
Before my pen touches paper, I watch, read, listen and think. I become interested enough in a subject to begin researching; I take notes; thoughts come at me in dreams, thoughts occur gently or mug me walking down the street. And suddenly out of that nebula a character is glimpsed and starts haunting me...
A mother – her middle daughter has been in prison for most of her life; her eldest daughter has come home after an absence of ten years; her youngest daughter is little more than a child, as if time stopped for her with some terrible event. As it did for all of them.
And then to avoid melodrama I bury the horror – as the characters do – in day-to-day life (one and a half days, to be more accurate). Will I get married? What’s for dinner? Should I have this baby? Does Mr Darcy really exist? Can a vicar keep his trousers on in company? Why won’t my mum talk to me? While Auden’s “glacier knocks in the cupboard.”
Until the glacier breaks out of the cupboard and they have to talk about it. They start talking. And we the audience are with them in this dialogue/negotiation/communion. Well – we could hear the glacier knocking right from the start and we’re kind of relieved it broke out of the cupboard into the lounge. It’s huge and we know next to nothing about glaciers – but at least we’re not ignoring that damned knocking anymore.
That’s what I want: a communion to take place when we – the writer, director, actors, production team and audience – are gathered together in the darkness. And in that communion, I want the audience to be delighted and haunted.
Brought up in Southend from the age of 11 Rob trained as an actor at East 15 before taking up writing as a career. He won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award in 1995 for Desert Island Dream Girl and again in 1996 for The Interview. Rob has had plays performed on the fringe in London, Edinburgh, Scarborough, Guernsey, Bristol, Manchester, Southend, Brighton, Augsburg Germany.
He has written extensively for TV - 19 episodes of Family Affairs for Channel Five - edited 3 screenplays for different companies, and adapted The Tempest as a libretto for the composer Anthony Bolton. Favourite Bad review: “Hamilton should have left this one in his top drawer.” Time Out. Favourite Good review: “This is the sort of playwriting Britain needs.” The Independent.
Rob’s favourite playwrights include Ibsen, Strindberg, Sophocles, Mamet, Connor McPherson, Pinter. Obsessed with the game of chess, Rob plays for Herne Bay in the Thanet Chess League.